John Harrison

John Harrison was born April 13 1957 in the Detroit area of Michigan, USA. He was raised in a middle class family of educators and artisans. His heritage has mixed lineage of European, French Canadian and North American Ojibwe.

John’s artistic expression has surfaced over the past few decades in his abstract and contemporary totems, deity’s and shamans.

His medium comes from washed up ocean material and industrial scrap that he collects on an ongoing basis. These offcuts and discarded waste from the ocean, that are viewed as trash to most, provide both the tangible material and creative inspiration for his pieces.

His process involves displaying his newly found material around his studio in various ways, to best see where they will join the thread that will culminate in a finished totem. There is a tribal and spiritual presence in his work. He seldom alters the shape of the components he comes upon, preferring to keep the integrity of the found objects as they have been discovered. What may seem as an imperfection or less beautiful or not fitting is a mere cross section of life. He finds it incongruous to alter or manipulate the DNA of the past to make sense of the future.

John believes that the pieces ultimately come...